So exactly why is Palestine shooting rockets and attacking soldiers with knives? Because they like them?

So imagine 2000 years from now when suddenly a group of people shows up with weapons that far outclass the American army. This group claims that America is their land, and they suddenly take down all American flags and culture. They even start naming the county after their own . They would then get all the international support to let the world forget the name "USA". What's worse, they would start killing Americans, pushing them out of the land, and destroying cities under their right of forming their own country. After more than 70 years of doing so, the world starts to see this group as the rightful habitants of America, they would even start to forget about Americans and their existence.

Now, let's say after many years, USA has completely disappeared from international maps. Then, a group of patriotic Americans would still give their lives away for their country. They resist this occupation. They start attacking the soldiers of this so call new country out of their love of their USA and out of their anger of how unfair things are.

Question is: Would that make them terrorists as you make the Palestinians to be?

I am an atheist, and I of course I believe all religions are scams. The fact that Israel did all of its crimes over the years in the name of religion just proves my point.

You've already gone out of your way to show that your're enthusiastically towing the right wing line about this. And I've already shown you this. Any further unrealistic claims on your part are on you to bolster.

What this means here is that until you can show somewhere, anywhere, at all, that you would support a two state solution, you are in favor of the status quo situation WRT Israel and the Palestinians. Ipso Facto, you're towing the American right wing/evangelical line. This isn't nearly as difficult as you're trying to make it.

Anyway, you're already past my response limit, and you clearly have no desire to understand the issues involved, so I'm going to leave you alone here. Have a... nice day?

JJJ wrote:

Palestine is a patch of land. It doesn't attack anyone.

There are dozens of factions, beliefs and attitudes to Israel within the Palestinian population, and nothing lasts forever.

Indeed. The cause is also a lot less religious than people here realize. It really is a matter of people simply not wanting to pushed out of their homes more than anything else. When this is addressed in an acceptable manner, the antipathy towards Israel goes away. We've even seen that happen before, in the early mid nineties.

tommy1808 wrote:

na, they just implement "Stand your ground" rules and are generally responsible, law abiding citizens. .

best regardsThomas

With the truth being that they are, for the largest part, law abiding citizens. I'm always amused when people talk about them in such black and white terms though. Some of these posters probably believe the Palestinians to be Orcs or something.

And even the same is true for Israel as well. Mostly good people who have no desire to harm anyone else. These issues only persist because American evangelicals have appropriated the cause and won't stop stirring the pot. And this of course gets a response from their own extremist minorities.

You've already gone out of your way to show that your're enthusiastically towing the right wing line about this. And I've already shown you this. Any further unrealistic claims on your part are on you to bolster.

You keep referring to wanting a country and people to exist as being right wing. I guess by allowing rockets and murder must be left wing. Politicizing this is not what is needed. What is needed is the violence to stop. If you want to characterize that as being a fringe political thing well that just outs you.

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

What this means here is that until you can show somewhere, anywhere, at all, that you would support a two state solution, you are in favor of the status quo situation WRT Israel and the Palestinians. Ipso Facto, you're towing the American right wing/evangelical line. This isn't nearly as difficult as you're trying to make it.

You made the charge that I am not in favor of the two state solution yet you refuse to produce any post to back your claim. Instead of you make up some strawman and claim I am evangelical. Third time I ask you to prove your claim instead of making up stuff. Truth is I am for any solution that both factions live in harmony, respect each other and stop violence. You keep refusing to admit the underlying truth that people are in play here that believe if you don't believe a certain thing we are going to kill you. No matter what the borders. Palestine doesn't want them to live anywhere in the region, they don't want them period.

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

With the truth being that they are, for the largest part, law abiding citizens. I'm always amused when people talk about them in such black and white terms though. Some of these posters probably believe the Palestinians to be Orcs or something.

This is a popular mindset that most Arabs or Palestinians are good and love Christians as a way to ignore or absolve the bad from their deeds. If we are going to stop the violence it can't be tolerated. If not your two state solution can't work anyway.

DarkSnowyNight wrote:

Anyway, you're already past my response limit, and you clearly have no desire to understand the issues involved, so I'm going to leave you alone here. Have a... nice day?

Translation, My false claim that you are a fringe right wing whacko that doesn't want a two state solution can't be backed up so I will just use the "If you support Israel you are a religious zealot that doesn't know the issues" card.

So exactly why is Palestine shooting rockets and attacking soldiers with knives? Because they like them?

So imagine 2000 years from now when suddenly a group of people shows up with weapons that far outclass the American army. This group claims that America is their land, and they suddenly take down all American flags and culture. They even start naming the county after their own . They would then get all the international support to let the world forget the name "USA". What's worse, they would start killing Americans, pushing them out of the land, and destroying cities under their right of forming their own country. After more than 70 years of doing so, the world starts to see this group as the rightful habitants of America, they would even start to forget about Americans and their existence.

Now, let's say after many years, USA has completely disappeared from international maps. Then, a group of patriotic Americans would still give their lives away for their country. They resist this occupation. They start attacking the soldiers of this so call new country out of their love of their USA and out of their anger of how unfair things are.

Question is: Would that make them terrorists as you make the Palestinians to be?

I am an atheist, and I of course I believe all religions are scams. The fact that Israel did all of its crimes over the years in the name of religion just proves my point.

I’ll bite.... Show me a record that Palestine was a country at any point in the past 2000 years.

Look, there is no question that there is an emotional attatchment to the land. Israel could have and should have done a much better job in the past 70 years. But then again, so should have Jordan and Egypt.

So exactly why is Palestine shooting rockets and attacking soldiers with knives? Because they like them?

So imagine 2000 years from now when suddenly a group of people shows up with weapons that far outclass the American army. This group claims that America is their land, and they suddenly take down all American flags and culture. They even start naming the county after their own . They would then get all the international support to let the world forget the name "USA". What's worse, they would start killing Americans, pushing them out of the land, and destroying cities under their right of forming their own country. After more than 70 years of doing so, the world starts to see this group as the rightful habitants of America, they would even start to forget about Americans and their existence.

Now, let's say after many years, USA has completely disappeared from international maps. Then, a group of patriotic Americans would still give their lives away for their country. They resist this occupation. They start attacking the soldiers of this so call new country out of their love of their USA and out of their anger of how unfair things are.

Question is: Would that make them terrorists as you make the Palestinians to be?

I am an atheist, and I of course I believe all religions are scams. The fact that Israel did all of its crimes over the years in the name of religion just proves my point.

I’ll bite.... Show me a record that Palestine was a country at any point in the past 2000 years.

Look, there is no question that there is an emotional attatchment to the land. Israel could have and should have done a much better job in the past 70 years. But then again, so should have Jordan and Egypt.

And I’ll bite zrs70, that’s a great litmus test. Have you ever heard of the fallacy of circular reasoning? You’re basically saying that a country can’t be a country if it hasn’t been a country before. And, over the past 2000 years, I can give you, er, multiple hundreds of examples to the contrary. In fact, every country on the earth as we know them today. Including Israel.

If you don’t like the idea of Palestinian statehood (or you think they’re not capable of it), that’s fine. Just don’t be so transparently dumb.

So exactly why is Palestine shooting rockets and attacking soldiers with knives? Because they like them?

So imagine 2000 years from now when suddenly a group of people shows up with weapons that far outclass the American army. This group claims that America is their land, and they suddenly take down all American flags and culture. They even start naming the county after their own . They would then get all the international support to let the world forget the name "USA". What's worse, they would start killing Americans, pushing them out of the land, and destroying cities under their right of forming their own country. After more than 70 years of doing so, the world starts to see this group as the rightful habitants of America, they would even start to forget about Americans and their existence.

Now, let's say after many years, USA has completely disappeared from international maps. Then, a group of patriotic Americans would still give their lives away for their country. They resist this occupation. They start attacking the soldiers of this so call new country out of their love of their USA and out of their anger of how unfair things are.

Question is: Would that make them terrorists as you make the Palestinians to be?

I am an atheist, and I of course I believe all religions are scams. The fact that Israel did all of its crimes over the years in the name of religion just proves my point.

I’ll bite.... Show me a record that Palestine was a country at any point in the past 2000 years.

Look, there is no question that there is an emotional attatchment to the land. Israel could have and should have done a much better job in the past 70 years. But then again, so should have Jordan and Egypt.

What more do you need as proof than a prime minister of Israel declaring that she was a Palestinian?Did you read my post just above yours?Let me post it againFor all who says there is nothing called PalestineFrom Golda Meir own mouthhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0ZFeDWhlDo

So imagine 2000 years from now when suddenly a group of people shows up with weapons that far outclass the American army. This group claims that America is their land, and they suddenly take down all American flags and culture. They even start naming the county after their own . They would then get all the international support to let the world forget the name "USA". What's worse, they would start killing Americans, pushing them out of the land, and destroying cities under their right of forming their own country. After more than 70 years of doing so, the world starts to see this group as the rightful habitants of America, they would even start to forget about Americans and their existence.

Now, let's say after many years, USA has completely disappeared from international maps. Then, a group of patriotic Americans would still give their lives away for their country. They resist this occupation. They start attacking the soldiers of this so call new country out of their love of their USA and out of their anger of how unfair things are.

Question is: Would that make them terrorists as you make the Palestinians to be?

I am an atheist, and I of course I believe all religions are scams. The fact that Israel did all of its crimes over the years in the name of religion just proves my point.

I’ll bite.... Show me a record that Palestine was a country at any point in the past 2000 years.

Look, there is no question that there is an emotional attatchment to the land. Israel could have and should have done a much better job in the past 70 years. But then again, so should have Jordan and Egypt.

What more do you need as proof than a prime minister of Israel declaring that she was a Palestinian?Did you read my post just above yours?Let me post it againFor all who says there is nothing called PalestineFrom Golda Meir own mouthhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0ZFeDWhlDo

I would be interested in the entire interview to see it in context. At the very end of the segment you posted, Golda say, "There were no such things as Jews and Arabs and Palestinians. There were Jews and Arabs."

So I would really love additional context.

BTW: there is printed historic currency of the Falkland Islands, the Virign Islands, Bermuda, Greenland, and many other places that were never a country

Golda said: "There were no such things as Jews and Arabs and Palestinians. There were Jews and Arabs."

The line of reasoning that Palestine "never was a country" is juvenile.

When Jews first came to the Levant, the people living there were "Palestinians" and as it was, they were Phoneticians in the coastal settlements and mostly Canaanites inland. There were a smattering of people who identified as expat Egyptians and others who identified as Hittites and Assyrians. And of course there were also Nabataeans in the south. There were few "Arabs"; Arabs back then were a nomadic tribal people who would have only come to "town" to trade their herds for locally made goods or for goods the Phoneticians had brought from other seaports.

Goldia knows all this of course, this is an example of how Zionists play on the ignorance of people not from the area, and not versed in history.

Religion is the source of almost all evil. That is why religiosity and violence corelate so nicely. Best hope for the region is that religiosity is fading away fast in Israel, with 2/3 of the population already being non-religious. Few people.in the City of God think God is real. Thank god.

Best regardsThomas

Interesting - I'd love to see your sample set. You might have missed the occasions in the 20th century where "enlightened" atheistic Communism was responsible for the deaths of millions and millions of people under Mao, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge and other Communist regimes.

The whole argument is a logically fallacy on two counts, a) because even if their leaders where atheists, the majority of their henchman wasn´t. and b) there where so few, supposedly, atheist dictators that you have no problem mentioning most from memory. Try that with believing dictators, from memory you´d run out very quickly. You got to give it to them, those that did exist where quite effective, i guess even a truely mad person like Stalin still has less delusions getting in the way of being effective as the average religious dictator.

None of those countries where hugs & puppy places before those regimes took over

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."Steven Weinberg, wise man....

Atheists in prison seem to be fairly alone... (yes, i know, that has to be corrected for a ton of socioeconomic effects, but they are underrepresented by orders of magnitude)

Murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations where belief in God is widespreadFinally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world,nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the 8 cities within the UnitedStates that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the countryAnd within America, the states with the highest murder rates tend to be the highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be the among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon.a 1999 Barna study found that atheists and agnostics actually have lower divorce rates than religious Americans

As for Plante's claim that studies have "consistently " found that religious people are less likely to engage in unprotected sex, that claim is directly refuted by a 2009 study that found the reverse - teens who make religion-inspired "virginity pledges" are not only just as likely as their non-pledging peers to engage in premarital sex, but more likely to engage in unprotected sex."During the Holocaust "in their studies of heroic altruism duringthe Holocaust, found that the more secular people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews"

I’ll bite.... Show me a record that Palestine was a country at any point in the past 2000 years.

Look, there is no question that there is an emotional attatchment to the land. Israel could have and should have done a much better job in the past 70 years. But then again, so should have Jordan and Egypt.

What more do you need as proof than a prime minister of Israel declaring that she was a Palestinian?Did you read my post just above yours?Let me post it againFor all who says there is nothing called PalestineFrom Golda Meir own mouthhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0ZFeDWhlDo

I would be interested in the entire interview to see it in context. At the very end of the segment you posted, Golda say, "There were no such things as Jews and Arabs and Palestinians. There were Jews and Arabs."

So I would really love additional context.

BTW: there is printed historic currency of the Falkland Islands, the Virign Islands, Bermuda, Greenland, and many other places that were never a country

What more do you need as proof than a prime minister of Israel declaring that she was a Palestinian?Did you read my post just above yours?Let me post it againFor all who says there is nothing called PalestineFrom Golda Meir own mouthhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0ZFeDWhlDo

I would be interested in the entire interview to see it in context. At the very end of the segment you posted, Golda say, "There were no such things as Jews and Arabs and Palestinians. There were Jews and Arabs."

So I would really love additional context.

BTW: there is printed historic currency of the Falkland Islands, the Virign Islands, Bermuda, Greenland, and many other places that were never a country

I would be interested in the entire interview to see it in context. At the very end of the segment you posted, Golda say, "There were no such things as Jews and Arabs and Palestinians. There were Jews and Arabs."

So I would really love additional context.

BTW: there is printed historic currency of the Falkland Islands, the Virign Islands, Bermuda, Greenland, and many other places that were never a country

The whole argument is a logically fallacy on two counts, a) because even if their leaders where atheists, the majority of their henchman wasn´t. and b) there where so few, supposedly, atheist dictators that you have no problem mentioning most from memory. Try that with believing dictators, from memory you´d run out very quickly. You got to give it to them, those that did exist where quite effective, i guess even a truely mad person like Stalin still has less delusions getting in the way of being effective as the average religious dictator.

None of those countries where hugs & puppy places before those regimes took over

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."Steven Weinberg, wise man....

Atheists in prison seem to be fairly alone... (yes, i know, that has to be corrected for a ton of socioeconomic effects, but they are underrepresented by orders of magnitude)

Murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations where belief in God is widespreadFinally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world,nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the 8 cities within the UnitedStates that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the countryAnd within America, the states with the highest murder rates tend to be the highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be the among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon.a 1999 Barna study found that atheists and agnostics actually have lower divorce rates than religious Americans

As for Plante's claim that studies have "consistently " found that religious people are less likely to engage in unprotected sex, that claim is directly refuted by a 2009 study that found the reverse - teens who make religion-inspired "virginity pledges" are not only just as likely as their non-pledging peers to engage in premarital sex, but more likely to engage in unprotected sex."During the Holocaust "in their studies of heroic altruism duringthe Holocaust, found that the more secular people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews"

With all the sources and access to data you like ....

best regardsThomas

That was the most butt hurt responses I've ever seen. No TRUE Scotsman! The Soviets weren't really atheists, etc

Look dude, I called you out on your BS, so suck it up and deal cupcake. I'm not even a religious person (I'm an agnostic), but the notion that atheism is this paragon of virtue incapable of flaws, is easily disproven by its historical capacity for murdering millions of people.

In my experience, I've always found atheists to generally be more dogmatic than the average Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim person. You're no exception.

Hate to break the news to you ,but for 80-90% of the region, what you are talking about happened before their lifetime. So yes, they need to look forward and not backwards.

You are the most honest Zionist I've ever debated in an internet forum. Most of them dance around nonsensical justifications for what they have done and continue to do. You just out and out don't give a shit about the morality of your position. That's cute.

That also justifies those incoming rockets.

Comments like the above are why I honestly couldn't care less about the opinions of emotive anti-Zionists.

At the end of the day, Israel will be around and thriving long after the incessant and irrational Israel bashers are 6 feet under.

but you should examine more about what Zionism means in a nation that has more secularism than religious inhabitants.

Israel is a religious state. A Jewish state to be exact.

What's going on now is a repeat of hardcore religious nutjob behavior as happened in 688 BCE when the Jews slaughtered the Babylonian overseers in their land, a repeat of 66 CE when they slaughtered a Roman Legion and a repeat of 132 CE when they again ambushed and slaughtered another Roman Legion. That's the time the Romans spent four years exterminating the Temple cult, and things were peaceful for many centuries until recently when the Temple cult returned as the orthodox. I can't say who is using who, but the Zionists and the orthodox are again in the same death spiral.

The end will most certainly be something similar to the prior occasions as these people know no limits.

Indeed Israel is a Jewish state. One that is literally surrounded by expressly Muslim states.

And yet anti Zionists never seem to express concerns about the overt religiousity of EVERY other nation in the area. Eventually one wonders why.

Or at least we used to. Now I simply do t care about your opinion. Israel will be around long after you're gone.

Trump himself gives no shits about israel. His positions have everything to do with the fact that Sheldon Adelson is one of his biggest donors. Democrats have far more Jewish representatives than republicans and are far less reliant on ummm... Anti Semitic voter groups. But there's a handful of major Republican donors who are pro-israel hence the weird disparity.

It does align you with rationality and truth, however. And it does put you on the right side of history.

I'm pretty sure a more nuanced take on the situation is the more rational, honest way.

Both sides have been wronged, both sides have their stories to tell. Israel shouldn't be responding to bottle rockets with guided missiles, Hamas is a horrible organization.

Israel is in the position of power, if anything is to ever be resolved they need to be the ones who hold out the olive branch.

Lol. Such a simple and unrealistic view of the situation. Then again it's views such as this that have gotten us 70 years of violence from the Jordanians masking themselves as Palestinians. But war is deceit after all.

It does align you with rationality and truth, however. And it does put you on the right side of history.

I'm pretty sure a more nuanced take on the situation is the more rational, honest way.

Both sides have been wronged, both sides have their stories to tell. Israel shouldn't be responding to bottle rockets with guided missiles, Hamas is a horrible organization.

Israel is in the position of power, if anything is to ever be resolved they need to be the ones who hold out the olive branch.

Lol. Such a simple and unrealistic view of the situation. Then again it's views such as this that have gotten us 70 years of violence from the Jordanians masking themselves as Palestinians. But war is deceit after all.

I'm pretty sure a more nuanced take on the situation is the more rational, honest way.

Both sides have been wronged, both sides have their stories to tell. Israel shouldn't be responding to bottle rockets with guided missiles, Hamas is a horrible organization.

Israel is in the position of power, if anything is to ever be resolved they need to be the ones who hold out the olive branch.

Lol. Such a simple and unrealistic view of the situation. Then again it's views such as this that have gotten us 70 years of violence from the Jordanians masking themselves as Palestinians. But war is deceit after all.

So, no room for nuances in your world view I guess.

Nuances is a code word used by people who want to swindle you out of something.

There are plenty of items up in the air in the middle east that can be negotiated. The fact that Jerusalem is the capital if Israel is not one of them.

Lol. Such a simple and unrealistic view of the situation. Then again it's views such as this that have gotten us 70 years of violence from the Jordanians masking themselves as Palestinians. But war is deceit after all.

So, no room for nuances in your world view I guess.

Nuances is a code word used by people who want to swindle you out of something.

There are plenty of items up in the air in the middle east that can be negotiated. The fact that Jerusalem is the capital if Israel is not one of them.

This is the kind of attitude that is causing Israel to lose its advantage of goodwill from the rest of the world. No one's swindling anything, we gave this to you. And the regrets for our ancestors decisions are growing.

Nuances is a code word used by people who want to swindle you out of something.

There are plenty of items up in the air in the middle east that can be negotiated. The fact that Jerusalem is the capital if Israel is not one of them.

This is the kind of attitude that is causing Israel to lose its advantage of goodwill from the rest of the world. No one's swindling anything, we gave this to you. And the regrets for our ancestors decisions are growing.

I'm not Jewish so I'm not sure what you gave me.

And no one gave Israel to the Jewish people...its pretty much always been theirs. The arabs fought tooth and nail to keep it in the clutches but failed to maintain their conquest.

Lol. Such a simple and unrealistic view of the situation. Then again it's views such as this that have gotten us 70 years of violence from the Jordanians masking themselves as Palestinians. But war is deceit after all.

So, no room for nuances in your world view I guess.

Nuances is a code word used by people who want to swindle you out of something.

There are plenty of items up in the air in the middle east that can be negotiated. The fact that Jerusalem is the capital if Israel is not one of them.

And no one gave Israel to the Jewish people...its pretty much always been theirs. The arabs fought tooth and nail to keep it in the clutches but failed to maintain their conquest.

This exposes the foundation of your ignorance. There has never been a time when the Levant was united under Jewish rule. Not in the eighth century BCE when the "northern Kingdom" was sacked by Sargon's Assyrians. Not in the sixth century when the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians occurred. At those times the Jews were just a bunch of competing tribes who in no way controlled the "region", they didn't even control themselves and there were plenty of other inhabitants of the Levant. "The Jewish Kingdom" as written in religious texts was merely a myopic and self serving label applied to a disparate group of Jews hundreds of years later.

Even in the period after Judas Maccabeus won his war of independence from the Seleucid Empire in 163, he did not control all of the Levant or the land now called "Israel". There were scattered Jewish kingdoms back then and not even all of those kingdoms were all in with the people running the Temple (and this is even without mention of the fact that at that time there were more Jews in Alexandria than there were in the Levant.)

In 105 BCE Aristobulus, Judas's nephew became the first ruler of the Hebrew Hasmonean Dynasty to call himself "king". It wasn't until 104 BCE, that the Hasmoneans conquered Galilee. From that time until 76 BCE the Hasmonaeans fought some wars of conquest in the region, but never brought most of the defeated into the kingdom, they remained "the conquered"; the Hasmonaens never attempted to create what we would think of as "Israel". In 76 BCE, Aristobulus died and the Romans were able to divide the ruling family against itself. Palestine was a Roman colony from that time forward.

Also, keep in mind that even after the Romans defeated and exterminated the descendants of the Maccabbees/Hasmonaens (the Temple Cult) in 135 CE, they did not vanquish all Jews from the Levant. Jews continued to live there peacefully, side by side with the descendants of the Phoneticians and all else who had always populated the region. When the population was Islamacisized in the sixth Century CE, the Jews were allowed to continue living as Jews as they always had. When the Crusaders came, the Jews fought shoulder to shoulder with their Muslim neighbors. The region remained at peace under the Ottomen and it wasn't until about the turn of the nineteenth century that Zionism was invented and all the trouble began.

I am a Israel/Jerusalem capital supporter and lean Democrat although I have some very conservative religious beliefs (as some on here know quite well). I find Trump indescribable in terms allowable on this message board. So you've got at least one person in the same boat.

Nuances is a code word used by people who want to swindle you out of something.

There are plenty of items up in the air in the middle east that can be negotiated. The fact that Jerusalem is the capital if Israel is not one of them.

This is the kind of attitude that is causing Israel to lose its advantage of goodwill from the rest of the world. No one's swindling anything, we gave this to you. And the regrets for our ancestors decisions are growing.

I'm not Jewish so I'm not sure what you gave me.

And no one gave Israel to the Jewish people...its pretty much always been theirs. The arabs fought tooth and nail to keep it in the clutches but failed to maintain their conquest.

Are you Israeli or an evangelical wingnut?

I hope you aren't Israeli because the Israelis I've met I've had a great deal of respect for and have enjoyed the company of. Many Israelis are capable of acknowledging that the Palestinians are perpetually getting the shaft but will justify the harsh treatment of them as being the best way to maintain order while there is no long term solution in the works. They see it as a necessary evil.